Jodie Marsh: Some people may hate me but I’m battling the bullies

Jodie Marsh with Sawyer Rosentein, who was paralysed by his bullies (Picture: Channel 5)

‘A journalist once sat me down and said: “We’ve done a survey – how does it feel to be the third most hated woman in Britain?”’ recalls glamour model and reality TV star turned bodybuilder Jodie Marsh.

‘I asked who were No.1 and No.2 and she said: “Rose West and Myra Hindley.” I can laugh about it now but at the time, I thought what the f*** have I done to deserve this? To be compared to child killers?’

She’s talking about a time in the mid-noughties when her habit of attending red carpet events wearing minuscule outfits (her ‘trademark’ look was a pair of belts across her boobs) made her a regular in tabloids and gossip magazines – but also a frequent target of abuse.

Marsh added to her infamy by revealing intimate details of her flings with a variety of pop types (her 2005 autobiography, Keeping It Real, is full to the brim with them) and appearing on reality shows that often portrayed her in a less than flattering light.

Arguably the worst excess of this period came in the form of MTV’s Jodie Marsh: Who’ll Take Her Up The Aisle?, which obliged her to find a groom and marry him by the end of the series. She found a willing partner, male model Matt Peacock, but theirs was an understandably brief union.

Marsh supported animal rights causes at the time – dressing up as a sexy chicken for a charity on one occasion and challenging Pete Burns in the Celebrity Big Brother house over his fur coat on another – but her message often fell on deaf ears.

Now, after a self-imposed break from the spotlight, she’s having much more success with her crusade against bullying. She detailed her own experiences of being bullied at school for a Channel 5 documentary last year, which proved successful enough to spawn the two-part Jodie Marsh: Bullied.

She visits victims of bullying in the US then implements anti-bullying policies she’s seen work there in a British school. In the first episode, she meets a young man who is paralysed from the waist down as a result of being attacked by his bully.

‘That was absolutely horrendous; heartbreaking,’ says Marsh. She also interviews parents of children who have committed suicide as a result of bullying.

‘It doesn’t get any easier the more I do it,’ she says. ‘It’s heartbreaking every time – and what words are there to say to a parent of a suicide victim? But the more we make people realise this behaviour is unacceptable, the more chance we have of stamping it out.’

Marsh does a good job. She handles the interviews with both bereaved parents and current victims of bullying sensitively, coming across as sincere and empathetic – presumably because she’s been through the same situation herself.

‘I don’t want kids to go through what I went though at school and I don’t want any more kids to kill themselves – it’s as simple as that,’ she says. ‘Bullying ruined my life and it took me years to get over it, so if I can help people I will.’

Marsh reveals she’s been surprised to receive compliments from people in the street, both about her original bullying programme and her devotion to bodybuilding. ‘It took me a while to get used to it,’ she says. ‘I was wary of people approaching me at first because I was used to getting abuse for so long.’

The impetus to change her ways came when she hit 30, four years ago. ‘Something mentally clicked,’ she says. ‘I thought: “You’re 30 now, you have to sort your life out.”’ She went about it by going to the gym, eventually leading to her current bodybuilding career, doing some gardening and teaching herself how to cook.

‘Just nice, normal things – and I found I really enjoyed them,’ she laughs. ‘I thought: “Jesus Christ, what have I been doing for all those years?” Going to nightclubs, getting drunk and trying to pull these blokes – it was very vacuous, shallow and pointless.’

What was Marsh’s biggest mistake? ‘I cared too much about what happened at school,’ she admits. Marsh was bullied until she stopped going altogether. ‘I felt worthless for a very long time and searched in all the wrong places to feel loved or valuable.’

She’s spoken about how becoming a celebrity caused her more problems – and going into an arena that comes with a constant supply of criticism can’t have been helpful. ‘I wanted to become a model because of what happened at school,’ says Marsh. ‘I wanted to prove to my bullies I wasn’t ugly, as if saying: “In fact, I’m so not ugly, I’m a glamour model now.” It was a warped way of trying to overcome my bullying.’

With this new-found insight, Marsh has made other changes. She’s entering bodybuilding competitions, selling her range of workout supplements and is more selective about the TV work she does.

‘I’ve made a vow I won’t do crap reality shows ever again,’ says Marsh. ‘You’ll never see me on something crappy with a camera following me around for no reason.

I want to do things people will learn from – that’s my aim, to inform and entertain.’